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Thursday, March 21, 2013

MICHEL PLATINI HIT OUT AT SEPP BLATTER OVER EURO 2020 CRITICISM

President of European football governing body UEFA and former French football great, Michel Platini has hit out at FIFA Chief Sepp
Blatter for his criticism of the hosting concept for Euro 2020, stating that
it amounts to an attack on the member associations of European
football’s governing body.Blatter last week criticised UEFA’s plan to stage Euro 2020 across
multiple cities on the continent as removing the “heart and soul” of the
competition. UEFA confirmed in January that Euro 2020 would be staged
across 13 different cities in Europe as part of a major restructuring of
the quadrennial national team tournament.

The idea to spread the
football tournament across Europe was first suggested by Platini in June
2012 after a lukewarm response to the governing body’s deadline for
expressions of interest in hosting the tournament in its traditional
manner.

Speaking to German magazine Kicker, Platini stated the Euro 2020
decision was taken after thorough research and had the backing of the
vast majority of UEFA members.

“At UEFA, all our major projects, such as Euro 2020 or financial fair
play, are the fruit of extensive dialogue and a collective decision
taken by all those involved,” said Platini. “I am not sure that this is
how (former Libyan leader) Colonel Gaddafi did things.

On the contrary, I
think we are a model of what good governance should be. An attack on
Euro 2020 may well be aimed at the UEFA president but, in fact, it is
really an attack on 52 out of 53 European football associations.
Everyone has the right to an opinion on UEFA projects.

I have no problem
with that, and I respect everyone’s opinion, including, of course, that
of Mr Blatter, with whom – contrary to what I have read in some places –
I get on perfectly well. Our relationship is intact, even though we
obviously cannot always agree on everything. Platini also responded to Blatter’s recent comments that UEFA was
attempting to block some of his reform efforts for world football’s
governing body.

It would be recalleed that UEFA in January rejected a proposal to limit FIFA
Executive Committee members to two four-year mandates and called for the
president to serve for a maximum of 12 years instead of the eight
proposed by the reform working group, the Independent Governance
Committee.

Platini said: “Ultimately, the European associations
unanimously support over three-quarters of the reforms proposed by FIFA.

The very few proposals that did not meet with unanimous support either
had nothing to do with good governance (because they were to do with
purely sports-political matters), or were simply not precise or clear
enough. In any case, it is ridiculous to accuse the European
associations of being conservative, because they themselves started this
reform process and have also made numerous additional reform
proposals.”